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I have been working up an idea for a series of side quests for my party to add a little more into the back-story and to feed them information they might not get from the printed content. My idea is based off an encounter I adapted from one of the suggested changes within Schloss Caromarc, changing the mummy encounter to be an intelligent mummy Magus. The party had some great RP with the mummy (via Telepathic Bond due to language barriers), mainly focusing on him trying to keep the party from killing him outright. The mummy is ancient, but was animated when the Whispering Way came through to act as a trap, only fully animating once any other living creatures came within the room. The cultists were not aware the mummy would be intelligent though, so he was free to act on his own.
I RP'd the mummy as being a mage-priest from an ancient Osirian culture, and when he was informed about the looming necromantic threat, he became keenly interested in not having his fragile undead form destroyed, and having his eternal spirit forever destroyed, nor is he interested in falling under the control of an undead overlord. He simply wants to return to his afterlife, but this is contingent upon the proper death rituals being performed before his form is destroyed. It took a lot of convincing, especially for the Pharasmin Oracle and the undead hating Ranger, but eventually the party agreed to help this mummy find his peace, which will require finding and performing the necessary ancient death rituals, while the mummy offered to help them learn more about the cultists who were causing all of these problems.
The second reason for this encounter was to provide some encouragement for the party to continue looking for the Count and the Beast further in the keep, and second to introduce the Harrow card mechanic into the campaign, as I had not been using it initially because I was lacking the physical cards. The mummy offered to aid the party in a group style "vision quest" to learn about the cultists. The visions were themed around a Harrow reading which led into a series of visions showing the events of the cultists at Harrowstone, the Count's encounter with the cultists, their taking control of the Beast, and the encounter between the Beast and the Promethean leaving the Beast nearly destroyed in the final encounter chamber. All of the visions were portrayed in an Osirian/Arabian theme so as to keep things from being too obvious. Following the visions, the PC's awoke and the players received their Harrow cards.
Following the visions, the mummy explained that he was going to travel to the locations he remembered from his living years to seek out the rituals that he would need. He used a Teleport scroll written on his wrappings after telling the party he would contact them down the road.
My plan for continuing this storyline is to have him return to the party with information on the rituals he needs, and their retrieval. There is only so much a mummy can accomplish on his own, trapped in a bizarre, unfamiliar future. My other desire for this story was to let the PC's learn more of the back story of the pertinent NPC's. I like the ideas I found on these forums about expanding the relationship between the Professor and Adivion and others.
My plan is to introduce a story showing a younger, college-age Petros, Judge Embreth (as Petros' girlfriend), Father Grimburrow, and a teenage Adivion (as Petros' apprentice). This group is commissioned as adventurers funded by Count Caromarc to explore ruins of ancient Osiria. These expeditions are how the Count came into pisession of the mummy, but they are also where Adivion first found the clues that would lead him to discover the Carrion Crown elixir. Ideally I would like to have these encounters split up into two or three mini-adventures, spaced out between the end of Book 3 and the rest of the campaign, with the final revelations in the visions allowing the PC's to have that "shock and awe" moment of villainous realization.
I haven't gotten to the point of fleshing out these adventures, but i wanted to put my ideas up here to see what people thought. Alot of my side ideas come from inspiration I have gotten from all of your posts, and I'd love to hear what people thought.